Big History is an idea whose time has come. In simple terms, it is the conjunction
of natural and human history. This story starts with the “Big
Bang” and ends in the domain of human culture in the future to
the extent that future events can be foreseen.

The addition of cosmic and biological
events to history offends some historians. Such phenomena belong
to the disciplines of physics, chemistry, and biology
which traditionally have been conceived in terms of static relationships.
Newtonian physics is based upon a set of mathematical equations that describe
immutable relationships between mass, force, and velocity. Chemistry is
based upon an atomic chart devised by Dimitri Ivanovich Mendeleev. Biological
studies
rest upon a foundation of classifications of plant and animal life first
devised by the Swedish botanist and zoologist Carl Linnaeus. These great
scientists were less concerned with the development of the universe than
its present state.

When primitive man looked at the night
sky, he saw a bewildering assortment of stars. Those small, bright spots
could be recognized
by their place
in constellations imagined to have human or animal shapes. Some “stars”,
later understood to be planets, seemed to move about in the skies. This
was all that could be determined within our framework of immediate experience.

It
took a long time for humanity to acquire instruments of observation
that would allow more and better information to be received. Devices
to detect
electromagnetic radiation, combined with our knowledge of chemistry,
allowed astronomers to determine the chemical composition of stars,
their surface
heat and luminosity, and their velocity and direction of travel with
respect to earth. Later this knowledge became translated into a picture
of how
the cosmos developed.

However, changes in stars happen much
too slowly for human astronomers to observe. The sun, for instance, is
expected
to last another five
billion years before the hydrogen fuel supporting its internal thermonuclear
conversion is exhausted and it changes into another type of star.

Fortunately, at each moment astronomers
can observe stars in a great variety of states. By what Robert Carneiro
calls “the comparative
method”,
it is assumed that “where a process cannot be observed over
its entire course in any one individual (star), it is equivalent
to observe it as manifested
by a number of individuals, each representing a different stage
of that process.” In
other words, “from the comparison of synchronic data one
(can) draw diachronic conclusions.”

A century ago, astronomers
Ejnar Hertzsprung and Henry Norris Russell, observing the spectra
of visible stars, created a graph, the “Hertzsprung-Russell
diagram”, that correlated the luminosity (brightness) of
stars with their surface temperatures. They found that the vast
majority of stars were
situated in a band sloping from the upper-left part of the diagram
(high temperatures and high luminosity) to the lower-right part
(low temperatures
and low luminosity). These became known as “main sequence” stars.
However, a number of stars fell outside the band. They included
red-giant and supergiant stars (having high luminosity and low
surface temperatures),
on one hand, and white-dwarf stars (having low luminosity and
high surface temperatures), on the other.

Gradually, the significance
of the stellar distribution became
clear. Stars within a certain size range undergo a process
of changing from
one state
to another. As they gather cosmic dust into a concentrated
mass by the force of gravity, the intense pressure produces heat and
a thermonuclear
reaction
converting hydrogen into helium plus energy. This conversion
continues at a stable rate over a long period of time (often
billions of
years). The star
then expands in size to become a red giant that has great luminosity
but a low surface temperature. Finally it becomes a white dwarf
with low luminosity
and increasing temperature as the star again contracts.

In
other words, stars experience life cycles. This means that each has
a history. Each star changes in predictable ways with
the passage
of
time.

Human knowledge thus proceeds from patterns
observed in the present to assumptions about past and future events.
The “Big
Bang” itself is assumed
from Doppler shifts in spectra of light that suggests distant
stars are receding from earth at approximately the same rate in all
directions. In conclusion, the
universe itself is expanding. The distance from earth and
rate of velocity suggests how much time has elapsed during the expansion.
Conversely, it can
be assumed that the universe was much smaller when the
process began. Ultimately, it began with an immense outward flow of
energy and
matter from a single
point in space and time in an event that we call the “Big
Bang”.

The point is that several centuries ago human knowledge
was inadequate to support theories of cosmic development.
Much
of our knowledge
has been acquired
during the past century. Until then, we knew only of static
relationships. An attempted Big History could not have
included theories concerning
the expansion of the universe or the destiny of main-sequence
stars. There
was then no history regarding such events.

History could
also not have included stories concerning the origin of chemical elements.
It is now known that originally
cosmic
matter consisted
mainly
of hydrogen, with some helium, and a smattering of lithium.
The heavier elements did not exist in the aftermath of
the
Big Big.
It took stars
known as supernovae
with internal pressure and heat sufficient to create
those elements followed by explosions that dispersed their materials
in space.
We know that the
solar system, for instance, was created from such debris.
From radiometric dating
techniques, we can also determine its age.

Biological
knowledge follows a similar pattern. Because many species of life have
evolved over millions of years,
scientists
cannot
immediately watch
those species being created. Charles Darwin conceived
the theory of evolution after a voyage to the south
Pacific where he observed
a variety
of species
in particular environments. Judgments could be made
of their origin by the comparative method. Meanwhile, paleontologists
in the 19th
century were uncovering
fossils and bones of extinct species that bore a resemblance
to living creatures. The tree of life was beginning
to
disclose
sequential
relationships and lineages
among the species.

With respect to Homo sapiens, skeletons
were found in east Africa and other places whose structure bore
a greater
or less resemblance
to
great apes
in comparison with human beings. Through dating techniques,
scholars could determine
which species was the ancestor of another. Besides
skeletal comparisons, the newly acquired technique
of DNA analysis
has revealed relationships
between species. Science again was developing a capacity
to track changes over time.

Finally, archeological
science has made discoveries relating to prehistoric human cultures.
Our knowledge
of primitive
societies increases as
each relic is retrieved from the ground and compared
with other relics of
a known purpose
and style. Anthropologists acquire knowledge of
ancient oral traditions
through conversations with living members of aboriginal
tribes. This scholarly knowledge
allows us to place prehistoric objects in time.

The
point is that modern scholarship and science have paved the way for
Big History. This enterprise
would
not have
been possible
in
previous times to
the degree possible today. The accumulation of
knowledge over the past several centuries has
been such that
historians have
a bewildering
amount
of information
about the past. The challenge now is to write
a story that makes sense
of it.

What we are doing is grafting various
kinds of knowledge upon history. To create history is
an art rather
than a science. The writer of
history is
one who selects particular details from the
record of human experience to produce a story. A certain
literary judgment
is exercised
in choosing some
events to include in the narrative while neglecting
others. The goal is
to produce
a meaningful story in terms of its purpose
and genre.

Big History is essentially a creation
story. It is the story of how the world, both natural
and
human,
came
to be. Artistry
is
required
to describe
a flow
of events from one situation to another which
is historically accurate and which makes
sense to
people. Otherwise,
there is no “correct” way
to write the history. With that in mind,
I am offering my own version of the story
to
throw into the hopper of Big History schemes
while this field
of study is still fluid and young.

The story
of Big History is divided between what
is learned from scientific and scholarly
investigations
of evidence
provided from nature and what
is disclosed in written records. In other
words, it
is divided between prehistory
and history proper. If the story aspires
to be a cosmology, it
might also indicate what will transpire
in the future.

While I do not believe in “end
of time” schemes,
I do believe that humanity’s future may be quite
different than the situation today. The
title of my book, A Cosmology of
Matter/Life/Thought, indicates
that the story will be about three distinct
types of being - matter, life, and thought
- that have emerged in the physical universe,
with predictions
made of future events. The story is about
the emergence of these different types
of objects or beings at diffferent times.

Scientific theories
provide the story in
the first part of the book. We have stories
of
how the universe
developed,
how the
earth and
solar system
appeared
in a certain part of the Milky Way galaxy,
how life appeared on earth, how Homo
sapiens developed
as
a species of
life, and how
human culture
developed
in preliterate societies.

With writing
came civilization, whose experience is told in the second part
of the book.
History proper begins
at this
point.
Here disagreements
start
to appear about how the story should
be told. In terms
of Big History, I propose that this
be about the creation and
development
of thought.

What is history? Traditionally,
it is the story of kings and other important
persons.
As a
boy, I once
read a
book, 1066
and All That,
which was about
the history of England told through
the succession of monarchs beginning with
William the Conqueror’s accession
to the English throne in 1066 A.D.
There are similar stories for other
nations.

This type of history has certain
advantages.
First, it is the story of particular
individuals. That
means we
can relate
to
the stories
in personal
terms. Second,
because these individuals sat upon
the throne, their activities affected
entire
nations
and therefore could become a focus
of national history.
Third, there were distinct break
points in the story
when one monarch died or was
overthrown and another individual
came to power. The history is simple, coherent
and
clean with
respect to story telling.

Each nation
has its own history in the experiences of the political administrations
whether
led by monarchs, emperors,
or presidents.
From the standpoint
of big history or even world history,
a complete telling of the story so
as
to represent all nations would be
much too lengthy to
be useful to readers. The historian
might find space in the
story for
the larger
political
units to be covered - the Roman or
Chinese empires, for example - but
the many
smaller nations would not merit inclusion.
Another problem is that histories
focused primarily on
government exclude
much of
human
experience. They
are filled with irrelevant details
from a typical reader’s point
of view.

The American writers Will
and Ariel Durant produced an eleven-volume
history titled
The Story of
Civilization that was more
than an account of political
experiences. Each volume covered
a particular period of time. Separate
chapters covered
political events,
social
and economic
history,
literature and arts,
philosophy and religion, ordinary
people’s lives, and other
subjects related to the culture
and society
of that period. However, the Durants’ work
was too Eurocentric to be an acceptable “world
history”. The
series of books was too voluminous
for most readers to digest in its
entirety.

Arnold Toynbee redirected
large-scale history to the history
of civilizations.
He identified
twenty-one
separate civilizations,
both living and
extinct, in the history of humanity.
His A Study of
History, originally
written
in six volumes, was condensed
to two volumes in the abridged version
produced
by D.C.
Somervell. In 1976,
Toynbee
published another
book, Mankind and
Mother
Earth: A Narrative History of
the World, which was not a study but
a historical
narrative. The chapters
of this
single-volume
work were
in
roughly chronological
order, while jumping around between
societies in
different parts of the world.
Deriving much historical information
from
this
book, I also
followed
its
scheme of organization.

However,
my book, Five Epochs of Civilization, differed from
Toynbee’s
work in several respects. Most
importantly, it defined civilization
differently. Toynbee regarded
civilization as a regional
entity existing in a particular
time and place. For example,
Babylonic civilization originated
in Iraq shortly 1500 B.C. and
culminated in the neo-Babylonic
empire of the 6th century B.C.
before it was overthrown by
the
Persians and later replaced
by Syriac and
then Hellenic civilizations.
My book regards civilizations
as a successive stages in the
development of a single worldwide
civilization. Communication
technologies and the emergence
of institutions in society
are important parts of the
picture.
Also, I pay more attention
to recent events than Toynbee
did.

Five Epochs of Civilization tells
the story of how modern society
was created.
Human
beings first became
organized
in small-scale
tribes dependent upon
hunter/gatherer activities.
Then, after agriculture was
adopted,
city-states appeared in several
parts of the
world.
From here society developed
over the years until
we
have
large metropolises
with a variety
of institutions including
those of government, religion, business,
education,
and entertainment.
Each is powerful in its own
way. Each institution has
a story
to tell in
the
course of its
development.

The chapters
in Five Epochs of Civilization reflect the
idea
that the various
institutions of society
each developed
as
full-fledged entities
at different
times in world history.
Societies became pluralistic in structure
as each new
institution developed
and was added
to the mix.

Separating from
primitive temple cultures, the institution
of
government developed
first. The
early period of
civilized history
- from around
3,000 B.C. until the
time of Christ - culminated
in large
political
empires. These were
succeeded politically
and
culturally by
institutions of world
religion.
After the Renaissance,
commercial and educational
institutions
dominated the
culture of western
Europe. Then, in the
20th century, there was
a culture
focused on entertainment
delivered primarily by
electronic equipment.
And now, a fifth
civilization is taking
shape at the hands of
computer technology.

In
other words, the historical
story in civilized
times is told in five
chapters, separately
describing the
development of their
dominant
institutions.
Power
struggles between the
leaders of those institutions
are
the “stuff” of
history. Even if this
history involves non-governmental
institutions more than
most, it is close to
other historical writings
that one might recognize.
It says: First this
event happened, then
this,
then that, etc. Therefore,
one might say that
my version is putting
the “history” back
into “big
history” in contrast
with writers who stress
such things as patterns
of increasing complexity
or energy use.

After
the first five chapters
that are based
on scientific
discoveries
and theories,
there
are
another five
chapters devoted
to the history of humanity
in civilized times.
How
is the story organized?
Which
materials
are selected?

Like
Toynbee, I recognize that the history
of events in different
parts
of the world
must be
narrated
separately, while
trying
generally to
maintain chronological
order. Therefore,
in the chapter
focusing on government,
for
instance, we progress
from the earliest
governments in
Egypt and Mesopotamia
to the Persian
and Greek empires, to
the
Roman empire,
to the Byzantine
Roman and the Sasanian
Persian empires,
to empires
in
India
and China, and
finally those of pre-Columbian
America. In the
chapter on religion,
we narrate
the histories
of
Judaism, Christianity,
Islam, Buddhism,
and Hinduism
successively.

A
second principle
is that events
relating to the
creation of an
institution are
given greater
emphasis
than those
when the
institution
is fully
developed. However
prominent
the Papacy may
have
been in medieval
Europe, it
deserves less
space in this history
than the
story of Jesus
and his companions.
The
purpose is to
explain how
something began
and how it grew
to a place of
power and influence in
society. For
ours is a creation
story.

Finally,
there is the
question
of periods
(or chapter
breaks). This
can be a
problem because
historical
epochs did
not neatly change
as, for
instance, when
one monarch
died and
was
replaced
by his successor.
To
a significant
degree, the
periods overlap. For
example, I
would say that the
second
epoch of
civilization
began in the
Axial Age
in the 6th
and 5th centuries
B.C.
while the first
epoch, characterized
by
large political
empires, did
not end until
the
west
Roman empire
fell in the
5th century A.D.

Furthermore,
there was
a timing difference
between
regions.
Egypt and
Mesopotamia developed first,
then India,
then
China, and
finally Europe
and the Americas.
A universal
chronology
will
not work
in world history.
The
different
peoples on
earth experienced
the
same set
of changes at
different
times.

Even
though the historical
scheme
presented
in Five
Epochs of Civilization is inserted
in the
Big History
book,
a modification
must
be
made to
embrace the new themes.
World history
focuses
upon the development
of society
and its
institutions. With respect
to
Big
History,
however,
we are
interested in the
advancement
of thought.
The problem
is that,
with
few exceptions,
humanity
does
not directly
seek to
advance
thought. Instead,
people
struggle for
power and
position
within
society; and thought
is advanced
as an
incidental
part of
that process.

Therefore,
I filter
the story
of advancing
thought
through
the history
of emerging
institutions
and the
communication
technologies
supporting
them.
An important
consideration
is how
thought
is embodied.
Its
embodiment
in written
language,
first
developed
in the
age of
political
institutions,
was a
major step forward.
When
alphabetic writing
made
literacy more convenient,
another
forward
step
was taken.
Then,
when
written texts were
mass-produced
by
the printing
press,
it took
us
into
the modern
age.

The modern
age
is primarily
an
age of machines.
Thought
is
embodied in their
design
and
purpose.
Machines
are
hybrids of thought
and
the materials
from
which
they
are
made. We
also
have
the
prospect
of
a particular
type
of machine,
the computer,
that
is able
to think.
We have
the prospect
of
artificial
thought
in rivalry
with
natural
(human)
thought.
One can
only
imagine
what
the future
will
be as
thinking
machines
become
further
developed.

In
summary,
Big
History takes
the
story of being
in
our universe
from
the
creation of
matter
and
energy following
the “Big
Bang” to
the emergence
of life
on earth
and finally
to the
thoughts
first
hatched
by the
human
species
and later
embodied
in machines.
The goal
is for
the story
to
flow
seamlessly
from
one chapter
to another.
Big History
may then
become
the basis
of a
cosmology
that
explains
scientifically
how our
world
came
to be,
where
it may
be headed,
and,
indirectly,
what
our place
in this
environment
is.

Post script: History and Science

Science is a study of the world as it is. History is a narrative of worldly events taking place over time. Science therefore describes the world in present tense. Historical events may take in present or past tense and even, by interpolation, in the future.

A cosmology such as is being attempted here is based upon the findings of science. Some scientific discoveries, notably those in archeology and astronomy, may illuminate a past situation. However, each scientific discovery is made based upon present evidence. Each historical event also took place in the present, even if its knowledge is preserved for future times. What history does is to put several events together in a single piece of writing. It is a process of compiling information from various points in time and stringing these pieces together to create a coherent story.

History of the Triple Existence is
one such attempt to tell the story of “Big History”. There
are others. Some works of Big History introduce scientific concepts;
they elucidate general patterns in the process of cosmic development. History
of the Triple Existence focuses
more narrowly upon the sequential development of the three types of being.
The emergence of matter is described in the first two chapters; of life,
in chapters three and four; and of thought, in the remaining chapters.

However, there is a scientific way of looking at this. Matter, life, and thought also have their own spheres of existence. These are called, respectively, the geosphere, biosphere, and noosphere. They are separate zones of activity on planet earth.

The preeminent scholar who studied
these zones was the Russian scientist Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky (1863-1945). See
web page. In October 2013, the global studies faculty of Lomonosov
Moscow State University hosted an international scientific conference, “Globalistics-2013”,
in memory of Vernadsky's 150th birthday. Representatives of the International
Big History Association (IBHA) presenting papers at this conference included
David Christian (founder of the Big History movement), Joseph Voros,
and William McGaughey. The Russian hosts included Alexander Rozanov,
Andrey Korotayev (also IBHA board member), Leonid Grinin, and Tatiana
Shestova.